Ever have one of those, "I didn't know that" moments? You know something obvious that you just never stopped to think of, and then bam it hits you.

I never thought of using a transmap on a box prop to make it so you could see inside. Talk about down and dirty fast and small file size buildings for background stuff.

So, why didn't I think of this before?

~shrug~

Box in a box. The jail cell (okay it could use a better texture, but this one done as a test) is a box inside the box, with the figures posed inside. Noticed the nice details of the figure holding the bars. There are no bars, just texture and transmap. 3 figures and 3 box (other box is platform). For a static image, some of the figures could be textured and transmaped onto a square prop. Duh! smacks hand to forehead.

Er, box inside a box. Confused myself with that. The cage is a box and I placed it inside the sherrif office which was a box.

Sometimes the most obvious solutions in hindsight were the ones staring us in the face when we first broke open the shrinkwrap. ;^) Carolly

Heh heh, shadow. I know the feeling. Here's another tip for you, if you want to try it and you have uv mapper. Build a wall with the poser box, using XYZ scale to ...er...scale it. Export the obj and take it into uv mapper, then do a planar map using Z-axis and 'by orientation' to give you a map of both sides. Select one half of the map and use 'assign to material' in the tools menu, then give it a name. Do the same with the other half, using a different name. I name them 'inner' and 'outer'. Save it and bring the obj back into poser. You can now make a room from this wall by duplicating it and postioning the 4 pieces and, (this is the cool part), by setting the outer side of the walls to 100% transparency..... you can see into the danged room from all angles! This is really neat when you want to do a room set with 4 walls, floor and ceiling and view it from outside while you're positioning things in it. The pic above is of a room pack I'm working on that uses this system. Top one is inside the room, bottom is from the outside. (quick renders). Just remember.... if you render from outside your room, your view will be blocked by the material on the inner wall, so that would have to be transparent too. After that, you can make transmaps for the walls, complete with doors, windows, etc. mac PS I have uv mapper pro and I think you can do all this in the free one. Hope my memory isn't at fault.

Very cool! Course you lost me at XYZ scale "by orientation" uvmapper. :O) No, I am all thumbs when it comes to uvmapping but I am trying to learn. This will give me something to experiment with. (Once I figure out what you said, G) For now it is easier for me to stick a box in a box or a series of boxes and/or square props in a box to make the room interior, but I can see the merit in doing it your way. Thanks for the tip.

If you have any probs, let me know and I'll do a step-by-step. It sounds a lot harder than it is when it's written out like that. It's pretty easy really. mac

Actually, having reread this it sounds a lot like what I did to one of the boxes I was messing with. Only thing I do different is I use the grouping tool instead of uvmapper.

Ah well...there you are. I avoid the grouping tool like the plague! LOL. Never could get to grips with it. I'm sure there isn't a lot of difference between the two ways of doing it. I just like uv mapper because I'm used to it. But the possiblity of adding materials to things gives a lot of extra functionality. And I find this easier in uv mapper. For example, if you take the poser cube and box map it in uvm, you can easily assign a separate material to each of the 6 sides. Can be handy if you need 6 colors on a cube, or even 6 different tex or trans maps on it. Lots of possibilities if you play with it. mac

Hmmm.... I just thought of something else. If you wanted shadows on a figure or face in poser, like say, the shadow of window-bars, you could put a transmap on the one-sided square (?), or the cube, if that didn't work. Something like a transmap with a horizontal and vertical stripe to create the 'bars'. You could use this for all sorts of things without having to go to all the hassle of actully building the shapes. Worth considering... mac

LOL! Okay, believe it or not I tried this a few minutes ago in uvmapper, just because I know it would be a good thing for me to learn to use that program. But I goofed it up and ended up doing it in Poser with the grouping tool.

It is really easy with the grouping tool. I set the six orthongonal cameras up first, so that I have the left, right, top, bottom, front, back of the box in view. I select the box, open the GT, and click on remove all. I then drag a square across the side of the box with the GT to select all polygons on the side in view ( whichever of the cameras I am using to view the box) and click on assign material and give it a name, like front, back, etc. Change camera views and repeat the steps again (remember to remove all first).

I also sometimes add a step to this and make each side a new group. So at the start I click on the new group button, name it, say front, (can now skip the remove all step since this group has no polygons selected) group that side and assign the material, click on new group, and repeat the process.

The second method has some added advantages as I can spawn each side as a new prop if I want. (You can also do this on a box mapped the first way by creating the new groups, then using the include materials to select the polygons to assign to that group. IE. front group, include material front; back group, include material back, etc.)

If I want to map both inside and outside, I would use the create a new prop on the mapped box, reverse the group normals, rename the assign materials by using the include material to add the polygons, than giving that side a new material such as frontIn, backIn, etc. So that I can use a different texture on all twelve sides. Scale the new box down from 100% to 99% or so that none of its polygons push through the first box (you want it to be inside) Then export both box as an new object (uncheck all settings) and import (uncheck all settings) as a new box object with 12 material settings.

Now, how would I go about doing all this in UVmapper?

Oops, I think I posted my reply as you posted your question so we are out of sink. Yeah, the bars I did above will cast a shadow because the box is transmapped so that where the texture shows it will cast a shadow if the lighting is right. I did this a long time ago on my Morning Glory picture where I made the curtain material semi transparent and used a colorful texture and matching transmap to create a shadow of the curtain lace pattern on the figure. Not exactly the same as what you suggested. But it makes me wonder, you could probably just as easily paint the shadow of the bars onto the texture the head texture for the figure. I suppose the possiblities for how to create the same basic effect are endless, and each with their own pro and con - not to mention personal favs for doing things. Since I only recently started to fool with making textures and trying to model stuff, the solutions I thought about in the past generally did not involve any of these two methods. Opportunities increase as we expand our horizons. :O)

er, that is sync, not sink LOL!

Quick render of above pic with shadows on this time.

Heh heh....cross-posting here OK. I found my copy of the free uv mapper and checked that you can do all this in it. No problem. The image isn't a cube, it's a long flat rectangle, but the principle's the same. Export the cube (or whatever) from poser as an obj file (alt-f-e-w) and uncheck ALL options. Open it in uv mapper (File/load new) and select Edit/new UV map/box, accepting the defaults. You should get something similar to the image. Select one of the faces by dragging around it with the cursor, and go to Edit/Assign to/..... At this point, you have a choice. You can assign each face to a material or to a group (forget region for now). If you assign to a material, your cube will open in poser with 6 different materials. If you use 'group', you would be able to create a PHI file and import the obj as a posable figure with 6 body parts. Let's stick to materials for the moment. Just select the faces one by one and give them each a material. I think it's a problem if you want double-sided materials with a cube, because the poser cube has no inside to it. To get a double-sided face, you have to use a cube for each face. Hmmm... i need to think about that one. It's complicated. Maybe you could combine the two systems to do that. The way I did that was in 3d max, using a boolean to remove the center of the cube and give me 6 new faces. Oh well... once you have materials for each face, just save it, accepting the defaults, except for 'export normals' Poser doesn't use them and they just add to the file size. Then import it to poser (alt-f-i-w), again with all options unchecked. It'll appear in exactly the same position as it was. mac

Cool! Thanks, on my way to try this out. :O)

Very interesting. Was able to follow your instructions and can see how uvmapper can be very useful for many things.

I also noted that the six side texture map I created in uvmap is different than the one that the grouping tool creates. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get all six sides to show in uvmapper, but here is what it looks like. I like this layout better as I can use any square texture and apply it to any side and it fits right. I could not get it to work quite as easily using uvmapper and had to customize the textures.

With the box I did using the grouping tool, I can convert a scene I built in Poser with various props into a simple low count prop. All I have to do is set up the camera shot I need to make the texture, render the scene, and apply it as a texture to one side of the box. I can then get rid of all the extra (weighty) props I used to build the setting, and still have a scene (via a single prop or two) I can shoot from different angles, have doors and windows that open and close, etc. (I can make doors and windows work using transmaps and parenting square props with textures to the main box as needed.) All, while keeping the polycount for the scene low since my entire town or building setting is made up of only a few poser box props - speeding up my render time, making for smaller pz3 files, and quicker animations.

In short, I think both ways of mapping have merit and are worth knowing. Thanks for your help. Always great to learn new and interesting things. :O)

Well, shadow, that looks perfect. Glad to see you got it done. Now you know how to do it both ways, you can use whatever system is best. Your map in uvm looks good. Just one more tip. If you want to, you can also make each side of the box fill the full map area for a more detailed tex look. Just select each side and press = (equals) and it'll enlarge to fill the full map area. Then you have to resave the obj. That way your tex can just be any square sized tex for each side's material and it'll give you more detail than having a mapped obj with 6 smaller areas on it. Anyway, that's a minor point. There's always more than one way to skin a cat in poser. LOL. Good going! mac

Thanks for the tip. Figured there was a step in uvmapper to do this, didn't know what it was though. Still learning. Very cool program though. I can see why folks like it. Eventually I will get more into it and probably then make the leap to the pro version.